The use of simulation training is growing rapidly. A simulation training session is one in which training of personnel is performed through the use of a simulator device that outputs real-time data in response to interactions of the trainees. In the medical industry, for example, medical training centers conduct simulation training that generally involve students performing simulated medical procedures and/or examinations on a mannequin simulator, which exhibits symptoms of various ailments of a patient during simulated examination sessions. Other types of medical simulators include EKG machines, blood pressure monitors, and virtual reality endoscopic, laparoscopic, and endovascular simulators. During each simulated examination session, which usually takes place in an assigned examination room, the student interacts with the patient during an appointed time period to make a diagnosis of the patient's ailment and to prescribe a proposed treatment plan or perform a procedure. Each examination room is equipped with monitoring equipment, including audio, visual and time recoding devices, so that the student's simulated encounter with the patient can be monitored in real time by an evaluator, such as a faculty member or upper class person. Typically, simulation training sessions are also recorded on video for subsequent analysis and teaching purposes. A similar configuration is used in other industries for other types of training sessions.
The monitoring equipment in the examination rooms may include multiple audio/video (A/V) sources, e.g. video cameras, to provide various camera angles of the training session. A typical recording training session may have three video feeds, for instance, taken from different camera angles, and one of the video feeds might show a machine that displays data from a simulator, such as EKG, heart rate, or blood pressure data. The data from each of the A/V sources is sent to a respective recording/playback device, e.g., a digital video (DV) recorder, for recording onto some type of hard recording medium, such as DVDs or DV tapes. This results in the output of each of the video cameras, for example, to be stored on separate medium during the training session. Optionally, the system may have the recording/playback devices synced together by a time sync generator. Each of the recording mediums produced by the multiple recording/playback devices, whether DVDs or DV tapes, are typically stored as a tape archive in a multimedia library.
In addition, the video recorded by each of the A/V sources may also be input to a video/audio mixer or processor of some type. Typically, the mixer merges the video feeds from the A/V sources and the output is recorded onto a recording medium as a merged video with multiple windows, one for each video feed. Another method is to overlay the simulator data as a composite image with the video feeds, like a picture-in-picture. One problem with this method, however, is that typically the overlay picture obscures part of the underlying image. The recording media, e.g., DVD or DV tape, may then also be archived in the multimedia library. After all the video is stored and edited, each of the videos needs to be manually associated with each of the trainees for later retrieval.
While viewing the training session during the recording, a trainer manually identifies performance events/issues, and manually notes the time during the video in which the event occurred. Once the simulation exercise is completed, the recording is stopped. Thereafter, the trainer conducts a debriefing session with the trainee(s) to evaluate the trainee's performance. Debriefing sessions can be performed right after the training session using the unmixed recordings, during which, the trainer plays back portions of recordings and analyzes the performance of the trainee using their notes as a guide. Since unmixed recordings are used, this process often involves lots of rewinding and fast-forwarding to get to points of interest.
Sometimes the trainer may desire to perform what is known as a highlighted debriefing session. In a highlighted debriefing session, the trainer plays back just a portion of the training session(s) for a detailed analysis with the trainee. To enable the highlighted debrief session, a post-video editing process is required to extract clips of specific examples from the various media stored in the multimedia library. For example, assume that a trainer wants to make a video of where trainee makes the most mistakes. This would require the finding and retrieving of the videos that contain the key clips from the multimedia library. During the video editing process, the clips are extracted from the video, and then either merged to create a video overlay, or the clips are mixed and alternated. After the video editing process is completed, the modified video is stored in the multimedia library, and then retrieved by the trainer in order to conduct the highlighted debrief session.
Although recording simulation training sessions has definite advantages in terms of being a useful teaching tool, the conventional system described above has several problems. One problem is that the system does not allow quantifiable individual feedback. Instead, the training session is often subjectively evaluated or graded based on what the trainer or reviewer thought they saw or didn't see during recorded exercise. A related problem is that to comment on a specific event that occurred during the training session, the trainer or reviewer must either remember where in the recorded event occurred, or note a time index in their notes. In addition, if the trainer wants to highlight a specific area of interest in the recording, the trainer may have to have the recording played and the segment of interest recorded separately during the editing process. For training centers that have a large number of training sessions and a large number of recordings per training session, such constant editing can be a significant burden in terms of manpower and cost.
Another problem is that the training sessions are stored on media such as DVD or DV tape that must be manually indexed and stored for archival. Since this is a manual process, problems may arise when attempting to find a particular recording for a particular training session or trainee. In addition, the recordings archived in the multimedia library may not be readily accessible to reviewers, particularly if the reviewers are not in the same location as the multimedia library. For these reasons, access to the recordings may not be possible or highly cumbersome as a number of training sessions recorded increases, which in turn, may limit the number of users who can view the recordings for evaluation or grading.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved method and system for providing synchronous multimedia recording and playback, particularly in the area of simulation training as one example.